A couple weeks ago I had the delightful experience of doing my taxes. It was extra exciting this year, because most of my money came from writery stuff. That means for the most part, I'm self-employed.

I've always thought "self-employed" had a nice ring to it. It's sort of Firefly-esque. Wear a gun, take jobs as they come, and never be under the heel of nobody ever again....

But then I found out that if you're self employed, you get to pay super double-fun bonus taxes. Because, apparently, the government hates you.

Up until this year, I've always gotten money back because I've lived well below the poverty line. This year, I got to give them money. It was, as they say, more fun than getting kicked in the throat. Mostly.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against taxes. Everyone loves to bitch about them, but taxes pay for schools, and roads, and snowplows, and sewage treatment plants. My friends have a son who is autistic, and the government helps them by bringing in well-trained people.

These things are important. If that's all my taxes went toward, I would pay them gladly. I would sing a song while writing out the check.

However, we all know that's not the case.

So, under the advice of several wise people, I've decided to start a corporation. This is supposed to prevent the government from taking quite as big a bite out of my ass for next year's taxes.

It doesn't seem right, honestly. The corporation is just me: I own it. And this corporation (let's call it Me-corp) will be employing me. That, apparently, is different from being actually self-employed. Sorry? What? How does that work?

I guess what it comes down to is that the government is really, really dumb. Dumb enough so that if I put on sock on one of my hands and use it as a puppet, it will be convinced that the puppet is actually paying the taxes, not me.

But I'm not above exploiting a loophole in the system. So all that remains is to figure out what to call this corporation. I having trouble picking a name. Names are important things, you know. They tell you a great deal about a... a corporation.

So far, the only names that I can come up with are goofy ones, like Puppet-Co. Because the thought of owning a corporation is just silly to me, I keep thinking of cheesy names and slogans. Things like:

Rothco: Our Future is Your Tomorrow....

The Badassery: Crushing Your Hopes and Dreams Since 1998

Another part of me wants to just geek out and name the corporation after something in my book. I could call it "Elodin Enterprises" Or "The Valaritas Consortium."

If y'all have any clever ideas, please feel free to list them below....

Also of note:

Today my book is going to be listed in the New York Times print edition at #11. It's probably not such a big deal for you, but I've been excited to see it....

I've been really surprised by the response I've had to The Contest. I've already received over a hundred entries, and decided to push back the deadline because some people heard about it late and asked for more time. New deadline is May 4th. Clever readers will realize that this opens up the possibility of taking pictures on Beltane.... I'm just sayin'.